Tanzania has the potential to develop without foreign aid

During the Cold War, most African leaders were very shrewd in their diplomatic game of playing one superpower against the other. Their aim was two-fold: to consolidate their own position (diplomatically and politically) and to squeeze out some economic “aid” for their countries. 

For their part, the superpowers (and the Western world in general) responded benevolently, knowing too well that there were some benefits which they stood to gain as well. One of them was to turn these countries into “aid addicts” and thus perpetuate their dependency.

The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s terminated not only the superpower rivalry between the US and the then Soviet Union, but also the African leaders’ game as aforesaid. But the deadly aid addiction continued and has remained the most devastating post- World War affliction on the African economies to date. 

The disappearance of the Soviet Union as a superpower also caused great anxiety, among African states, with our leaders lamenting that the continent might be “abandoned” by the Western powers whose focus now had turned to their brethren in Eastern Europe.

A similar concern was expressed recently by some African leaders in the wake of the world economic recession which originated in the US about three years ago. The recession drove even the largest and most solid economies on the verge of collapse. 

Our leaders were heard saying that Western nations would not be able to send Africa “aid” because of the crisis that engulfed America and the rest of the industrial world.

All these (rather genuine) worries by African leaders underscored the severe damage that foreign aid has inflicted on the continent, inhibiting, in the process, its political and intellectual capacity to think out solutions for its own problems. Because of the aid syndrome, African politicians and their bureaucrats can hardly think independently of outside assistance! Even the citizenry have been conditioned to believe that without foreign aid, or the support and “guidance” of institutions like the IMF and World Bank, things cannot go right! 

The capital outlays of many of our development projects which we could easily conceive, plan, execute and manage with our own resources “must” include a significant component of donor funding; otherwise the projects are “not feasible”!

The national budgets of most African governments cannot balance unless they are supported by substantial amounts of aid money from Western donors. (In Tanzania, where donor contribution to the national budget is about 40 per cent, it is called “General Budget Support”).

So, the aim of aid which, in Tanzanian for example, was originally intended to support ongoing, self reliant-oriented economic activity and assist in capacity building, has, over the decades, been transformed to become the basis of practically all developmental activity. In short, foreign aid has become indispensable to Africa’s – and for that matter Tanzania’s – development. Africa has become so dependent on aid that if the donors were to decide to close the “aid taps”, some of the countries’ economies would collapse immediately.

In her provocative and compelling book, “Dead Aid”, Ms Dambisa Moyo, who strongly believes (as some of us honestly do) that “aid has made the poor poorer, and growth slower”, underscores that poignant point when she poses the uncomfortable question: “What if, one by one, African countries received a phone call ….. telling them that in exactly five years the aid taps would be shut-off – permanently?”

That is the question I rolled in my mind as soon as I saw the headline of the lead story in the Sunday Citizen of last week, which read: “Budget balancing headache for Dar es Salaam–Mkulo’s tricky test as donors withhold cash”. It was all about the sudden decision of the donor community not to give Tanzania some $220 million (about Sh 297 billion) in aid. I found this exciting and thought-provoking.

As I went through the story, I tried to reframe Moyo’s brain-teasing question from the perspective of Tanzania’s aid addiction, and came up with an hypothetical one: What if President Kikwete received a telephone call from the Head of Mission of the European Union countries represented in Tanzania, as well as phone calls from the ambassadors of the US, Canada and Japan, telling him that beginning the next financial year, the aid taps will be turned off – permanently?  

As I posed this question, I thought that the donors’ move could perhaps be a blessing in disguise for this country to start thinking seriously about setting her development agenda independently of donors; indeed to begin thinking out solutions for our own problems or managing our own lives and our own affairs without relying on donor support. 

 

For I sincerely believe, as I hope many Tanzanians out there do, that this country is very rich in natural resources and has the potential to be self-reliant in her development endeavours.